The Little Prince
by devilberry
Summary: "He's not a hero and he's not a knight in shining armor all sparkly golden. He's just got blue eyes and purple hair and sometimes he wishes they would both stain black so he and father would match." Trunks, the Brief family and Trunks/Goten friendship.


_I know next to nothing of DBZ, so I apologize in advance for that. This was just for shits and giggles and my waifu Stepha because um yeah I love her._

The Little Prince_, do you guys see how clever I am?  
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><p>The bruises on his skin match his hair.<p>

Mama loves his hair color. When he was small and he'd wake up at unholy hours, all nightmare-fresh, she'd smooth it back for him and whisper little lovenotes into his little boy ears. _Shh, honey,_ like the very words were tying him down to gravity,_ it'll be alright_. And she'd kiss his lavender head and say that it's just like Grandpa's. Rich and purple like a king. Her lips to his skull, she'd smile and call him _my little prince._

Father never says anything like that. He'll just look at his son with some sort of anger in his eyes, brushing back his own black hair, and mumbling about _real_warriors.

So when he trains too hard and too much, it'd make sense that his bruises stain watercolor purple and not a deep dark black.

Fists smash and smash and smash against the sharp walls of the Gravity Chamber and break his little fingers. Just a little cracked and a little broken but he smash smashes more and more, because Father gets this bright look in his black eyes when he sees Trunks working like he's ready to die.

Nobody talks about it, not really, but he knows he has so much to live up to.

When it's dark outside and she's run out of lullabies and her fingers are still curled in his bright hairs, Bulma will tell her son stories. She has a lot of stories to tell, considering all of the great people she's lived her life next to, and all of the great villains she has seen fall.

Maybe it's just a mother's pride, or maybe she wants her little boy to have lots of hope to hold in his chubby fists, but she always tells him of Trunks. The bigger one. The older one. The _warrior_.

Her nails painted bright red, she dances them across his forehead. _I know you'll grow up to be just like him, Trunks,_ pulls the blanket up close around his tiny face, _you are the same person, after all. __  
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>And Trunks thinks that's okay. The other Trunks was brave and he was strong and he died for what he believed in, and there's something really honorable about that. Baby Trunks wants to die, sometimes, to prove his worth. Maybe give his father something to mourn.<p>

But sometimes, Trunks doesn't want to be _him._He doesn't want to be perfect and nice and noble. He's selfish, sometimes. Arrogant. Angry, like Vegeta.

He's not a hero and he's not a knight in shining armor all sparkly golden. He's just got blue eyes and purple hair and sometimes he wishes they would both stain black so he and father would match.

But he really wishes people would stop looking at him with this _look_ on their faces and that hope in their eyes, because maybe he won't grow up to be just like the other Trunks.

But our little boy is down on his luck, because everyone he knows knew his alter ego first, so they all see _him _tangled up in those lavender strands, instead of the tiny thing who actually owns them.

Except baby Goten. When he punches Trunks, he punches Trunks the brat. Trunks the dork, Trunks the loser, Trunks the arrogant, annoying, insufferable, bossy, haughty, superior, obnoxious—

His best friend, really.

How could they not stick together like they're one in the same? They were practically raised as brothers, always rolling around in the same dirt and yanking at one another's hair and fighting and fighting until those pretty purple patches bloom all over both their white baby skin.

Their mothers hate it, and their fathers laugh, but it's really irrelevant either way.

When they fuse, things just click. Everything is natural to them when they're the same person. They move together, as one single entity, and it works. Trunks smiles, because he's buried somewhere deep inside Gotenks, and he thinks that he would look so great if his hair were always that inky color. More Goten-black than Vegeta-black.

It's impossible to feel lonely when he's got such a happy little thing next to him.

Piccolo trains them hard, and they're both always so tired and so hungry, and later on when they both tell Gohan all this, he'll just laugh and pat their tiny heads because they don't know how good they had it.

When Trunks thinks about evil and villains and bad things and Buu, he isn't scared. Not really. He's worked too hard to be scared. He's _ready_.

He tries not to think about it much, but that thing _killed_ his father. Tore him up, piece by piece, and blew him to kingdom come. _He was a prince, _Trunks tells Goten, eyes foggy and wet, _the princes kills the monster. It's not supposed to be the other way around._

(Mama held him close and kissed his forehead. _It was for the best, Trunks, he did it to save us. He just wanted to make sure we were okay,_and the boy doesn't understand how his father will be able to see that they're both okay from the Afterlife, but his mother was crying so hard that he doesn't want to argue with her.)

But when they fought, they fell. They couldn't handle the monster either, and it conquered them. They fought well and hard, but just not enough.

It was to be expected of such stupid little boys, really.

And later on, when the villain is dead and everyone has been brought back to life and they all lived happily ever, both of Trunks' parents put their arms around him and he tries to ignore Mama when she says how proud she is and he fought so bravely and _he reminds you just of Trunks, doesn't he Vegeta? __  
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>Because I am Trunks, and he wants to say it but he doesn't.<p>

He pries himself from their loving grips, trying to destroy one of the few decent moments of the Brief family, because they've destroyed it for him, and tries to find somewhere quiet. With lots of food. And Goten too, if he's lucky.

(But really, Goten and food can near always be found in the same glance.)

Curling himself up underneath a rickety wooden table, he finds his friend, stuffing chicken into his mouth. And he laughs, feeling just a bit better already.

_Hungry?_ And Goten will probably still be all sunshine and little boy innocence when he's fifty. But Trunks smiles anyway and helps himself to a chicken leg.

Legs crossed under the table, like awkward little things, Trunks has to ask Goten why he's such a good mood all the time. _Aren't you ever just _sad _is what I want to know._

And Goten says, yes. Sometimes I am sad, he says, but then it just stops. The sadness. It always stops.

Cracking his smile an inch wider, Trunks takes a big bite out of his chicken, and laughs. He puts his hands on Gotens head, and musses up that perfectly untidy inky hair. Says,_ thank you,_and baby Goten can't figure out why his best friend would say such a thing.

But he wraps his short arms around his companion, and he feels very small, but he knows that one day he'll grow up and be bigger. And he knows that Trunks will too, and he won't be anything like that other Trunks kid everybody's always talking about.

He'll be different. Better, if we're lucky.

And in a few minutes, Vegeta will come looking for them, and he'll be all hot and angry to see all that food gone and his son curled up around Kakarott's for dear life, and he'll yell a lot, and some part of Goten knows this. But that's then and this is now, and he can't bring himself to care.

Holding onto his friend, Goten presses his face against that purple mess and grins. "Your hair color is so pretty, Trunks. It looks good on you."

A fist finds Goten's gut and Trunks tells him to just shut up.


End file.
